Vintage Computing in 2020 - Overview

During the past year and a half as we've settled into our new home in Suburban St. Paul, MN, I've continued to enjoy Retro Computing, AKA Vintage Computing.  I enjoy the process of fixing old computers more than using them, although I have spent quite a few hours playing some of the old games. I used to think that I had a unique interest in installing and configuring old versions of Windows and Mac OS.  I now realize that there are quite a large group of retro computing enthusiasts with a wide variety of interests, even within the Twin Cities.  We have Free Geek MN, and we even have our own YouTuber, Collin of This Does Not Compute.

My interest in Retro Computing started with a desire to relive some of my own experiences from around the time I first became interested in computing, but I’m also interested in the history in general and the history of technology, so I soon became interested in the computers that came before my time, for example the 1983 Compaq Portable and 1986 Apple Macintosh Plus shown at the top left and top center of this image...

Three of the computers have mismatching faceplates, these are my “Bridge” computers that have various flash based boot drives or a mismatch of modern and older drives.  Since I’m more interested in the functionality, this doesn’t bother me, just another opportunity to keep an eye out for some low-cost upgrades should they become available.

I’m equally interested in Apple and IBM PC Compatible products, having used both as a young person.  My first computer was a Commodore Vic-20 that was a hand me down from my Uncle, but that computer was quite out of date, and although I read the manual and did some simple BASIC programming, I didn’t really stick with it long enough to become comfortable with that platform.

I have “only” one rack full of computers and as with most collectors storage space is at a premium.  I have some computers in storage that are less interesting too me that I’m ready to sell, and I have my project computers that are not yet working stored out in the garage.

If you are interested in specifics, I have detailed articles about each computer on this blog.  Thanks for your interest, and please leave a comment if you have questions!

Original Compaq Portable

It has been one of my goals in vintage computing to move “back in time” to the early days of the personal computer, I’ve been intrigued by the story behind the original IBM PC, the 5150, a fascinating story of the tension between one of the classic engineering trade offs (make vs buy), and the unforeseen consequences this can have in a product development, but I’m no longer interested in collecting IBM in particular after reading this book “IBM and the Holocaust”.  So, I’ve been on the lookout for another brand XT class machine, and I was very intrigued when a damaged Compaq Portable I popped up at my local Free Geek store.  This was one of the first IBM PC clones, but they did something really different by creating a “Portable”.  I won’t rehearse the development of the machine here as it’s been covered well elsewhere.

My Compaq is an early unit, with the plastic parts stamped 1983, and a Rev. B BIOS.  When I purchased it, there was an error code at boot, so I knew that the processor and RAM were working.  The case was in rough shape, cracked and dirty, but a carrying case was included.

Once again, the Vintage Computer Forum was one of the best sources for information.  Also, the 8-bit guy did a restoration video series  on this machine, having seen these resources gave me the confidence to give this repair a shot.  There was a long list of issues with the machine, but with knowledge of how to take the machine apart, clean and lubricate floppy drives, replace the defective foam and foil pads in the keyboard, upgrade the BIOS, install an XT-CF adapter so I could boot from Flash, and upgrade the RAM to the maximum 640K, I now have a fully functional first generation PC running at 4.7Mhz.

Not shown in the picture, I moved the CF slot up to the front of the machine in the middle of the unused floppy drive bay that was opened up by removing the non-functional drive.

Update:  March 2021

I found a Tecmar Captain card and installed that in this PC, so it has a functional Real Time Clock, a working Microsoft Serial mouse.  I've installed Windows 2.0 on this machine, and that's been alot of fun to poke around with, since that version predates my first PC ownership.

Let me know if you have any questions for me about the Compaq, or other Vintage Computing topics in the comments below.

Vintage Computing - Pentium 75

In mid 2019, I became interested in vintage PCs again, or perhaps still.  I was feeling nostalgic about the era around 1993 when I got my first PC, a Gateway 2000 486DX 25.  If memory serves, that PC came with 4 MB of RAM, a 170 MB hard drive, and an. upgrade to the 15” CrystalScan monitor.

I started to look around a bit on Craigslist, but I didn’t know yet that because of the popularity of YouTubers like the 8-Bit Guy and LGR, I’m not the only one feeling nostalgic.  The cost of retro computers has started to go up significantly in the last few years.  The fact that most of these computers have already been recycled by now makes even systems that used to be very common more rare.

So, after finding only computers that were too new, I reached out to a Craigslist seller who mentioned that they had other computers for sale that were not yet listed.  This seller did not have a 486 on offer at the time, but recommended a Pentium 75 system that was nicely equipped.  I remember being amazed by the Pentium systems when they were new, and for me one of the most enjoyable aspects of retro computing is being able to purchase systems that I could not afford back in the day.  The computer had been carefully gone over by the seller and parts had been changed out to get it in good working order.  I was immediately able to use and enjoy the machine for retro gaming.

One of my longtime interests has been alternate operating systems, so one of the first upgrades I performed on this machine was to get it booting from a compact flash card slot on the back of the machine.  This allows me to load multiple operating systems on different CF cards.  The included hard drive still works, and it’s in the case if I ever want to go back to it, but the compact flash cards have so many benefits.  They provide an easy way to move files onto the retro computer, make backups easy, and run faster.  The compact flash card upgrade is kind of a no brainer, especially for DOS retro PCs where the costs are only $10-15 dollars for the circuit board that adapts the IDE cable to a CF card, and the OS doesn’t use the drive for virtual memory.

Shortly after purchasing the machine, I bought and installed Planet X3, the excellent top down strategy game by David Murray, the 8-bit guy.  I realized that I was interested in the idea of traveling further back in time to before I was interested in computing, before I even owned a computer, but the Pentium 75 really started me back on the path for retro computing in the PC world.

As I started getting interested in XT class machines, this computer has morphed into a bridge computer through adding a 360K floppy disk drive, which I was able to find at the local Free Geek here.  I took the drive apart enough to clean the heads, tested, and install it in this PC, which now serves as a disk imaging workstation with Dave Dunfeild’s IMD program.

So, the mid 90s being pretty well represented by this hardware, I have moved onto other projects, but this system still remains setup and will retain pride of place in my collection, receiving new software, making new 360K floppy disks, and perhaps even the occasional hardware upgrade.

My current wish list for this computer includes:
Epson branded VGA Monitor from the period
Epson PS/2 Keyboard from the period (or an older, clicky beige AT keyboard)
Adaptec PCI SCSI card
360K Floppy Drive w/ Beige Faceplate

Vintage Computing - Apple IIe Card for Macintosh LC

Earlier in 2020 I was able to acquire a Macintosh LC, a Craigslist find.  The computer was reported to be "not working", although the pictures showed that it included a monitor, keyboard and mouse, as well as some software.  I got it home and started with an inventory and some basic cleanup with IPA.

It turned out the system was working, but it did need some TLC.  One of the surprising discoveries once I had the cover off was that the Macintosh LC included an Apple IIe card.  This was a pleasant surprise, as one of my long term goals is to "move back in time" so to speak, to acquire computers back to the original personal computers.  I had given up on the idea of getting original Apple II hardware, as the costs have gotten a bit ridiculous.  My first exposure to computers was Apple II computers in my school, they were already quite dated by that time, but we learned everything from Typing to CAD on Apple II computers, with some Oregon Trail thrown in.

Unfortunately, the computer had gotten separated from the "Y" cable that is used to connect the proprietary DB-26 connector to the apple standard floppy cable and standard joystick cable.  As with all vintage Apple stuff the cost are ridiculous so I started the research to see what the best path forward would be.

Reading on the Vintage Computer Forums, I commented on a thread here. and got a pinout, thanks again to the good folks on VCF, they've been a great resource on several projects.  The DB-26 connector itself is not incredibly rare, this part can still be purchased on Digi-Key and other electronics houses.  I ordered three.

The connector for the Floppy Drives is getting especially difficult to find, based on this article from the creator of FloppyEmu, but since my main goal was to get connected with the FloppyEmu anyway, I skipped the difficult to find connector (or the impossible mating male version) and went with header pins, which I had originally purchased for Raspberry Pi projects.

I didn’t have an Apple Joystick at this point anyway, so I simplified the pinout to this diagram.  After I soldered up the adapter, I carefully measured which pins had voltage on the computer, then powered off and plugged in my new FloppyEmu device.   It worked!  (I wish I could say it worked the first time, but I'd been through all three connectors by that point)

Anyway, I'm thrilled now that I'm able to use the FloppyEmu with my Apple IIe card in the Macintosh LC.  Now that I'm exploring the Apple IIe software library a bit, I'm learning how critical that joystick really is, so I may need to go back and re-order another connector and make another attempt with a joystick.

Vintage Computing - Windows 10 on IBM ThinkPad T60

Today's retro computing article is about my attempts to run Windows 10 an IBM ThinkPad T60 in 2019 and 2020.

I've had this T60 since I bought it used around 2010, the reason I wanted the computer is that I had one of these when new as a work computer.  My favorite thing about the computer has to be the keyboard, it has a long travel and a nice mechanical feel.  It's not as good as a buckling spring keyboard, but it just puts modern machines to shame.  Back in the day, I remember being impressed with the build quality and the software stability of the machine.  The PC was just rock solid and I remember thinking how much better this PC was than the ones I'd used for work before.

For quite some time I ran this PC with Windows XP, but at one point a few years ago I got inspired to install an SSD, add a USB WiFi Dongle that supported better security, and load Windows 10 on it.  Since this PC is hardware limited to 3GB of RAM I decided to load Windows 10 32 Bit on it.  Getting Windows 10 to run well was a challenge.  At first I was not able to get any video drivers working as this machine has an ATI Radeon X1300 chipset this not supported by any drivers that I could find.  Here's the procedure I used to get this working...

1. Use the ATI Radeon legacy driver (Windows Vista 32 Bit) from the AMD website, not the Lenovo site...
https://www.amd.com/en/support/graphics/legacy-graphics/ati-radeon-x-series/ati-radeon-x1xxx-series
2. Install catalyst software, the installer fails to identify hardware but the files are left on the drive.
3. Go to control panel and open the Display Driver group.
4. Open the Properties for the Generic Microsoft Display Driver.
5. Choose the Driver tab, Click Update Driver, and choose "Browse My Computer", pointing at the directory where Catalyst installed the drivers, by default...
C:\ATI\Support\10-02_legacy_vista32-64_dd_ccc\Packages\Drivers\Display\LH_INF
6. The first Radeon X1300 driver on the list worked.

Note:  In the future, don't ask or allow Windows to update the driver, or it will return to the generic driver.

I've also had some startup issues, and bluescreens when switching from AC power to battery power.   I went into the Power Options control panel, and to advanced settings and made sure that all the battery settings matched the settings that are used on AC power, and that seemed to resolve those bluescrens.

There were also startup issues related to the power state.  Startup completed just fine on AC power, but would not work correctly on battery power.  I ended up disabling Fast Boot in the Power settings, and the system has been stable after that.

One remaining issue with my system is that the display driver doesn't seem to support anti-aliasing for fonts, so many of the fonts look pretty jagged on the screen, at least when compared to modern computers.  Please let me know in the comments if anyone has figured out a way around this problem?

Also, another mistake that I've made was that I used to have Windows XP working on this machine, and I wiped the drive when I upgraded to Windows 10.  In hindsight, I should have kept that Windows XP installation backed up on a different drive.  Since then, I have gone back and re-installed Windows XP on the second drive.  I purchased a drive caddy that sits in the CD ROM drive bay of this laptop, so I can dual boot back into the original OS for this computer.

The Thinkpad T60 Running Windows 10 in 2020.

One other lesson learned with this computer, I tried to upgrade this PC to fastest possible processor that was supported.  This upgrade worked, but the cooling solution in my laptop was not adequate to keep the top of the line processor adequately cooled.  The processor spent so much of it’s time thermally throttled that the stock processor ended up being a more usable solution.

So, there’s not much left on the “To Do List” for this computer:

Find a solution for the video driver problem (font smoothing not working)
Swap in another drive and load a Linux distro, perhaps Mint or Lubuntu, something lighter weight.

Moving Data using a "Rosetta Stone" Macintosh

As you may have read in my previous article, I have a Power Macintosh 8600 / 200 that is a "Rosetta Stone"  Mac, which I will refer to as a Bridge Mac in this article.  For background about this machine, please refer to the article "My Adventures with Classic Macintosh Hardware - Part 1".

As we left things in that article, the Mac was booting OS 9.1, the last major supported version of Mac OS that will run on that hardware.  Since then, I've discovered through some more careful reading that if I were to get System 7 running, I would have access to more of the original 400K mac floppy disks in the collection.  This was the beginning of my quest to install System 7 on the 8600 / 200.

Being that the computer already has a SCSI2SD adapter, it's quite inexpensive to swap system drives.  Finding a System 7 installer CD that was compatible with the 8600 was more of a challenge.  I tried several disk images before I found one that the computer would boot from.  In the end, the Apple approved System Installation disk for the 8600 and 9600 for Mac OS version 7.6.1 was found here...

The next challenge came because with the SCSI to SD adapter, you cannot easily power off the machine, pull the SD card, and write files to it with the modern Macintosh.  With the SCSI2SD we must find another drive that can be installed in the Mac while it is running either System 7 or Mac OS 9.  I was extremely fortunate because this Mac already has a Zip Drive.

I was able to get a USB Zip drive for my modern mac from my local Free Geek store in Minneapolis, one of my favorite stores!  Once all the hardware was here and in place, I was hoping that I could move files from System 7 directly to my modern Mac in one jump, but the Modern Mac OS (10.14 Mojave) has read only access to "Standard HFS" disks.  So this single jump method will work for migrating files from old too new, but not the other direction.

The more modern HFS Plus file system drives are read write in the Modern Mac, but they seem to work better if you use the old machine to format the drives, then verify access on the modern mac.

There is some information on the Internet about "Puddle Jumping", but it took me some time to realize how to do this.  Although it seems obvious now, I'll cookbook this in a bit more detail in case it will help others.  Here's what I did do to get files transferred From the Modern Mac OS X (Mojave 10.14) machine back to the Bridge Mac running System 7.

Setup Procedure:

1. Start the Bridge Mac in Mac OS 9
2. Format one of the Zip Disks Standard HFS
3. Create these folders on that Zip Disk
   System 7 -> Mac OS 9
   System 7 <- Mac OS 9
   System 7 -> Mac OS X
4. Format another Zip Disk as HFS Plus
5. Created two folders on this Zip Disk:
   Mac OS 9 -> Mac OS X
   Mac OS 9 <- Mac OS X
6. On the Bridge Mac HDD (Mac OS 9 System), create folders to store these files since only one Zip Drive will be plugged in at a time:
   System 7 <- Mac OS X
   Mac OS 9 <- Mac OS X
   Mac OS 9 -> Mac OS X
7. Insert the HFS Plus Disk in the Zip drive attached to the Modern Mac
8. Verify write access to the HFS Plus disk

Now we have the tools in place, we can begin moving files from new too old (the more challenging direction).

1. Prepare all the file data on the Modern Mac computer.
2. Insert the HFS Plus disk into the Zip drive on the Modern Mac
3. Copy the files from the Modern Mac to the folder "Mac OS 9 <- Mac OS X"
4. Eject the Zip Drive from the Modern Mac
5. Start the Bridge Mac using the system drive for OS 9
6. Insert the HFS Plus Zip Drive into the Bridge Mac
7. Copy the files from the Zip folder "Mac OS 9 <- Mac OS X" to the HDD "System 7 <- Mac OS X".
8. Eject the HFS Plus Zip Drive and Insert the HFS Standard Zip Drive.
9. Copy the files from the HDD Folder "System 7 <- Mac OS X" to the folder on the Zip drive called "System 7 <- Mac OS 9"
10. Shutdown the Classic Mac
11. Swap the system drive from OS 9 to System 7 and Restart
12. Move the files from the HFS Standard Drive folder called "System 7 <- Mac OS 9" to the appropriate folders on the System 7 HDD and enjoy access!

I hope these instructions may be of use.  Please leave a comment below if you have suggestions to improve this article, or if you want to share your experiences moving data back and forth off Retro Mac hardware.

Update:

If you only need to use the Bridge Mac to copy data from HFS Standard disks to HFS Plus disks, use Mac OS 8.x. This version allows read and write access to both disk types and can save some hassle.

My Adventures with Classic Macintosh Hardware - Part 1

I've really enjoyed the content on YouTube for Retro Computing.  It's fun to reminisce about the computer hardware I used to use, and I've been especially enjoying content from:
8-Bit Guy
Retro Man Cave
LGR
Cameron Gray

These guys have inspired me to go back and do a bit of retro computing of my own.  Here's a story about one of my recent adventures in retro computing.

I've had an ongoing challenge that has made me want to get  an old Macintosh computer back up and running, my wife's collection of Macintosh 3.5" floppy disks contain data spanning from the late 80s into the early 90s, including all her files from her college years.  We had an old PowerBook computer, but it was stolen some years and with it I lost the ability to access these 400k and 800k floppy disks.

Chapter 1:  Rosetta Stone Mac

Some time ago, as I was reading up on this topic, I found this page on the Internet, Working with Macintosh Floppy Disks in the New Millennium.  This article was incredibly helpful, listing in general all the ways that I could go about retrieving the data from these disks.  At first, I was most interested in the KryoFlux disk controller because I'm really impressed by the engineering effort, and I like the idea of being able to use new hardware to access old software, but it seemed alot of money to pay for a one-use hardware design.  I found the idea of a "Rosetta Stone" Mac quite intriguing.  I had forgotten that before Apple's Super Drive that could burn both CDs and DVDs, they had the original Super Drive that could read both PC and Mac floppies, and these Macs had those floppies.  I didn't know that much about this era of Macintosh, because although I was an Apple II user in  High School, and a Mac user after college, during my college years I didn't spent much time with Apple computers.  I did some research on the Internet, and the Rosetta Stone Mac seem to be making a bit of a recovery in terms of their value, with some systems going on eBay in the $200 to $300 price range (2018).  So, I also put this idea on the "back burner" and waited.

Recently, I discovered a new store in Minneapolis about a mile and a half from my house called "Free Geek".  Although this is a non-profit organization I believe it is a franchise because I've seen YouTubers visiting stores of the same name in other cites.  On one of my first visits, I saw a couple of examples of the last of the Beige Macintosh computers sitting on a back shelf.  These had been gone over by the technicians, and had Mac OS 9 installed on them, the last of the Classic Mac OS'es.  I didn't put two and two together until my second visit, when I remembered that I had a "Rosetta Stone" Macintosh on my wish list.  I was able to pick up a working Power Macintosh 8600/200 for just $85.  This computer was a PCI based architecture, with SCSI hard drives, but it also had a Firewire and USB card installed, along with 10 Base T Ethernet, so I had alot of options for getting data on and off of the computer.

Once I got the computer at home, I did have some trouble getting it to boot reliably.  Apparently there is a shortage of these SCSI hard drives, and the 2GB Quantum drive was beginning to show it's age.  After opening the case and reseating the SCSI connectors and RAM, I was able to get the device to boot and recover all the data off the floppy disks that were readable.  It looks like we lost about 1/3 of the disks completely, and a couple of files were corrupted on the other disks, but I think this is too be expected after so many years.  Mission Accomplished!

Chapter 2:  SCSI2SD

I just couldn't put the computer back into storage knowing that the hard drive was on its last leg, so I started reading up on methods for replacing SCSI hard drives on these classic computers.  It turns out that there's a modern day hardware engineering solution for this problem, SCSI2SD, which allows the user to replace a failing SCSI hard drive with a modern MicroSD memory card of significantly greater capacity.  I learned about how other vintage apple users had been able to use this device, and so I ordered one for myself.

Getting this to work was a bit of a chore, and I won't bore you with the details of all the rabbit trails I went down, but I will detail the route that worked for me in hope that it will help someone else out.  Before I start into the detail, I should provide some background about the modern computer tools I used to get this going.  First, a computer with a CD Burner is required to get the Mac OS Boot Disk made.  I also found it critical to use the USB 3.5" Floppy Disk drive that I'd had in storage for some years attached to my modern computer.  Although my modern computer is a Hackintosh, I believe that a PC or Linux box would be equally useful for these setup tasks.

I initially tried to get the SCSI2SD and dying Quantum SCSI drive working at the same time, but I was not able to make that happen.  I think we were just in time and the HDD is now completely non-functional, but I'll leave it inside the Mac just in case it can be repaired in future.

The first goal for the SCSI2SD computer was to get the unit working as a boot drive.  The configuration utility allows setting the SCSI parameters, and I found a good deal of useful information on the web.  Here's instructions on how to configure SCSI2SD to emulate the original 40MB drive used in the earliest Macs.  Unfortunately, that won't help us because 40MB isn't enough space for Mac OS 9.  I ended up setting up Two 2GB partitions on the SD card I had (that consumes 2 SCSI IDs).

MacOS 9.1 is the latest version that will run on the 8600 hardware, according to the link above from EveryMac.com.  Apple made that software a free download, but they no longer host the files, which you can find hosted here.  I downloaded and burned this CD to disk.  The disk boots, but this is where we hit another snag...

The default Apple Hard Disk utilities on the Mac OS Boot CD for formatting drives will not format Non-Apple drives to use as a System Boot Disk.  I wish there was a way for me to read back the SCSI parameters for my sometimes working drive and enter those parameters into the SCSI2HD software.  If that was possible, then the default Apple HD utility would work but after much web searching on the topic, I was not able to figure that out and gave up.  If you know the SCSI parameters for a 2GB Apple branded hard drive, please leave a comment below, or alternately, if you know of a software utility that would allow me to extract that information from my drive, please also put that in the comments.  Once I shifted away from that technique, I was left looking for a 3rd party utility that could be used to format the hard drive during a boot from a Mac OS System Disk.  On this web page, I found mention of this utility, LIDO, and a download link to the Macintosh Repository.   This Utility fits on a Floppy Disk, so the OS install procedure must be modified a bit.

Boot from the Mac OS 9.1 Install CD.  Instead of using the default Mac OS Hard Disk Utility, insert the floppy disk with LIDO on it, and run LIDO instead.  Use LIDO to initialize the drive, then go back to the Mac OS Install program, and it should pick back up from there, format the drive, and set it up as bootable.  The installer did pop up a warning about the version of the Hard Disk Driver being out of date, but that has not affected the system's ability to boot or run from the drive.

That was it!  After that, the system boots and runs.

Chapter 3: Finishing Touches and Moving Forward

The last things I wanted to do before putting the Mac away was get a good hardware mounting system worked out.  The SCSI2SD web page pointed out this 3D printed bracket that someone designed.  Since I do not have a 3D printer, I ordered that here.  Unfortunately, I was not able to find this in the Beige color that matches the outside of the Mac, but I'll keep all the faceplates.  There's no spare 3.5" drive bay available, so I found a low-cost off the shelf 5.25" to 3.5" drive bay adapter at my local Micro Center and superglued these two black plastic parts together.  With the SCSI2SD bolted down to the 3D printed bracket, and with the 5.25" adapter bolted into the tower we can now access the USB programming port and the MicroSD card slot from the front of the machine without opening the case.

For another $10 or $20 dollars, I found an external Firewire CF Card Reader.  This is how I move updates, games, and large files back and forth from the Classic Mac, although I should also investigate some Ethernet networking, as I believe that can be made to work as well.

Steve's Power Macintosh 8600 / 200

The drives shown on the front from top to bottom are:

3.5" Super Drive Floppy Disk

CD-ROM Drive

100MB Zip Drive

SCSI2SD Drive